The film industry is different in that it generates not only jobs, but also publicity.

It would be crazy to shoot “Jersey Shore” in Jersey Shore, Pa. That’s a real town in central Pennsylvania. And no one would confuse it with Seaside Heights, where that MTV series starring Snooki and pals was filmed. That would make no sense.

Does it make any more sense that the movie “Silver Linings Playbook,” originally set in South Jersey, was shot in Pennsylvania instead? Or that HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire” was shot in Brooklyn, not Atlantic City?

The reason is found in tax breaks each state offers for film and TV production. Other states hand them out freely, but the Garden State is stingy. This traces back to a tiff the governor had with MTV in 2011 over a $420,000 tax credit claimed by the producers for the infamous reality series.

After canceling “Jersey Shore’s” tax credit, Chris Christie proclaimed himself “duty-bound to ensure that taxpayers are not footing a $420,000 bill for a project that does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the state and its citizens.”

A cynic might suspect another motive. Those tax credits, amounting to 20 percent of production costs, come out of the state’s coffers. Meanwhile, much of the benefits go to the towns.

In Seaside Heights, for example, the cast and crew occupied more than 200 motel rooms during production, paying a motel tax that helps the town keep property taxes down. They also ate and drank, further enriching the local businesses. Publicity brought in tourists by the tens of thousands.

The town’s return was large and obvious. The state’s return was somewhat hidden. Trenton collected sales and income taxes from cast and crew salaries. But that revenue was not as easy to see as the outgoing tax credit.

Lesniak argues that driving the companies out eliminates all revenues, state and local.
As for the overall effect on tax collections from the program, a 2010 New Jersey Institute of Technology study says the government gets back in taxes what it loses in subsidies.
The administration’s problem is that the impact of those tax credits shows up directly in the bottom line of the annual budget, which is perennially tough to balance. Meanwhile, revenues remain diffuse.

But that’s not a reason to cap the credits. The film industry is different in that it generates not only jobs, but also publicity.

All we need is tax breaks equal to those offered by our neighbors. Let’s approve them before another Jersey-based production makes a run for it.